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This collection represents the cream of the more than five hundred articles written for the Village Voice by Kyle Gann, a leading authority on experimental American music of the late twentieth century. Charged with exploring every facet of cutting-edge music coming out of New York City in the 1980s and '90s, Gann writes about a wide array of timely issues that few critics have addressed, including computer music, multiculturalism and its thorny relation to music, music for the AIDS crisis, the brand-new art of electronic sampling and its legal implications, symphonies for electric guitars, operas based on talk shows, the death of twelve-tone music, and the various streams of music that flowed forth from minimalism. In these articles—including interviews with Yoko Ono, Philip Glass, Glenn Branca, and other leading musical figures—Gann paints a portrait of a bristling era in music history and defines the scruffy, vernacular field of Downtown music from which so much of the most fertile recent American music has come.

Preface: New Music and the Village VoiceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Importance of Being Downtown

INTERVIEWS

Shouting at the Dead: Robert Ashley’s Neoplatonist TV OperasThe Part That Doesn’t Fit Is Me: Yoko Ono, the Inventor of DowntownMidtown Avant-Gardist: Philip Glass Sails Columbus into a Clash of Keys and CulturesTrimpin’s Machine Age: A Revolutionary Tinker Revives the Dream of Infinitely Fluid MusicDancing with the Audience: Carman Moore’s Mass Attempts to Heal the WorldHarps from Heaven: Glenn Branca Reemerges from the Thick of TheoryShadowing Capote: Mikel RouseThe Dance Between: David FirstRaising Ghosts: Leroy Jenkins Brings the African Burial Ground to LifeOpera Meets Oprah: Mikel Rouse Hawks Salvation in an Opera for Real PeopleA Difficult Woman: A Cosmic Piano Concerto from the Outspoken Composer of VaginaMonkey Business: Fred Ho De-Europeanizes Opera with Martial ArtsMusic and/versus SocietySampling: Plundering for ArtMozarts Live! “Performing Mozart’s Music”Killers in the AudienceLetting Euro GoWhat Normal People Hear: Rose Rosengard SubotnikDysfunctional Harmony: CreativityDon’t Touch that Dahl: Classical RadioSpin It Around: New Music in the Public’s HandsParadise at Our Fingertips: Voltaire’s BastardsWhat’s Your AQ?Dump the MulticultNo More HeroesMusic of the Excluded MiddleMedicine Music: The Uses of ArtWho Killed Classical Music? Forget It, Jake—It’s UptownMusical PoliticsParadigms Lost: Rhys Chatham/John ZornBlurred Out: On LanguageRock Rules: BandwagonismPulitzer Hacks: Amateurs/ProfessionalsComposer’s Clearing House: The Pulitzer PrizeObitchuaries: John CageTotally Ismic: TotalismThe Last Barbarian: John CageBerlitz’s Downtown for Musicians: New-Music PerformanceWhat Are We, Chopped Liver? The New GenerationThe Great Divide: Uptown Composers Are Stuck in the PastY Not 2K?Ding! Dong! The Witch Is Dead: Modernism Loses Its Grip as the Odometer Turns OverAestheticsLet X = X: Minimalism versus SerialismA Tale of Two Sohos: Plato/AristotleA Secret Manifesto: Fred LerdahlThe Modernist Dance: War in the BrainIt’s Only as Good as It Sounds: Richard RortyNoises of Fate: You Don’t Need a Sampler to RecontextualizeSounding the ImageWaiting for Monteverdi: MinimalismDads versus Shadows: James HillmanVexing the Purists: VexationsMusical Amnesia Cured! ImagismEnd of the Paper Trail: ScoresReflections on Books, Figures, and EventsNo Shortcuts: John CageE.T., Go Home: TuningComposing the Lingo: Harry Partch, American InventorModernist: Morton Feldman’s Abstract ExpressionsOne-Note Wonder: A New York Retrospective for Italy’s Saintly Mystic, Giacinto ScelsiMinimalism Isn’t Pretty: Tony Conrad Makes a Truculent ComebackFather of Us All: The Critic as ComposerGrand Old Youngster: Turning the Century at Lincoln CenterConcert ReviewsMaximal Spirit: La Monte YoungBig Machines, Little Issues: The 1987 International Computer Music ConferenceFirst Flight: John AdamsAdmiring the Waterfall: David GarlandYawn: R.{ths}I.{ths}P. HaymanMottos and Models: Morton Feldman/Rhys Chatham/Anthony ColemanSearching for the Plague: Diamanda GalasOceans without Walls: Laurie AndersonInsiders, Outsiders, and Old Boys: New Music America ’89Dark Stormy Night: Nicolas CollinsLet There Be Noise: David Rosenboom/Trichy SankaranMusic in Time of War: The Composer-to-Composer SymposiumDon’t Worry, Be HopiEnough of Nothing: PostminimalismVoltage High: Ron KuivilaIsn’t That Spatial? Henry BrantThe Limits of Craft: Frederic Rzewski/Philip GlassOpera Is Relative: Einstein on the BeachWell-Tuned Blues: The Forever Bad Blues BandVoice of the Unutterable: The S.E.M. EnsembleHow Peculiar? The American EccentricsFlutes and Flying Branches: The Taos Pueblo PowwowThe Tingle of p {mult} mn {mi} 1: La Monte Young/Marian ZazeelaThe British Don’t Have Oral Sex: Now Eleanor’s IdeaView from the Gap: Emerging VoicesRegarding Henry: The World’s First Multicultural Modernist Conservative Patron Saint of OutsidersWhat Our Pulses Say: David Garland/Billy MartinMistaken Memories: Tony Conrad: One-Idea Composer or Late Bloomer?PassingsLegacy of the Quiet TouchThat Which Is Fundamental: Julius Eastman, 1940–1990Philosopher No More: He Quietly Started a Spiritual Revolution

Index

Kyle Gann is music critic for the Village Voice and Associate Professor of Music at Bard College. He is the author of American Music in the Twentieth Century (1997) and The Music of Conlon Nancarrow (1995).

"This is an indispensable piece of living history, documenting an absolutely crucial moment in the development of 21st century music. For many of these pieces and composers, Gann's discussion is the only record we have. The criticism is at the highest level: careful yet uncompromising, historically informed, erudite, and well-expressed."—Robert Fink, University of California, Los Angeles

"A highly intelligent and vividly engaged depiction of the new music scene over the last several years. The music Gann discusses is some of the most important being produced today, as well as the least attended to by scholars and the media. The 'you are there' feel of these articles conveys the intellectual and artistic rigor behind the music, as well as the passion and commitment of its makers. The writing is polemical, emotional, advocatory; Gann is often provocative, and always honest and forceful."—Evan Ziporyn , Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Clarinetist and Composer, Bang On A Can All-stars

"The late 1980s and the 1990s were probably the most contentious years in the history of American music, especially in New York. The Soho News had folded. The New York Times had opted out. During this time, Kyle Gann was consistently the most interesting, reliable and honest reviewer in all of New York. Everybody read him. Probably every composer mentioned in this book would want to "correct" what has been said about her or his music. But you can't argue with Kyle. His opinions are too deeply felt. He is too well-studied. He writes too well. And he is too smart."—Robert Ashley, Composer

"No one else could have written this marvelous book. No one else has been so completely immersed in "new music" as has Gann for some twenty years—and moreover likes it. No other music critic is so courageous, communicative, compelling, and candid (if now and then contentious)—or writes such consummately crystalline, convincing prose. Hurrah! Huzzah!!"—H. Wiley Hitchcock, Distinguished Professor of Music emeritus, CUNY, and founding director, Institute for Studies in American Music at Brooklyn College